[X] Action Plan:
Poor Communication Kills
This entire plan should take no more than a few hours immediately after the meeting. Once the conversations are done, the update should end, and allow us to vote on further action.
Conversation 0: Gasai Guilt
- This is the second portion of the meeting where we are all officially in the room for Gasai's trial.
- Conversation 1 should happen after this. I don't want anyone angry over those revelations in an environment where they really need to bite their tongue and elide any commentary.
- Nobody speaks unless spoken to, unless it's a neccesary component of the ritual.
- Anyone giving answers should be truthful, answer only the question asked, and volunteer no extra information. In particular do not apply any of your spin or judgement. Just the facts.
- Kagome, Kieko, and Akane should be particularly mindful of all of this.
- In fact, everyone in the group should pause for a few seconds between thinking up an answer and saying it, using that time to make sure the answer is minimal and unbiased.
- Don't use mathematicians answers though. "Yes" is not a valid answer to "Was it A or B?" but "A" and "B" are.
Conversation 1: Inoue's Information
- Before the debrief: Everyone makes sure the only people around are Inoue, Keiko, Noburi, Kagome, Akane, and Us. Minimize chance of external eavesdropping as best each of us can.
- Let Inoue debrief us off screen unless she has something new to add.
- We want to see how everyone reacts.
- We react to the news of Kannagi's betrayal by dispelling, then we react as the thread approximately has.
- Mention possible options of "Burn it all", "Run away quickly", and "Roll with it until we have the scroll, then one of the first two".
- Note: "Burn it all" is not "kill everyone", it's "cause enough damage to cripple the village's ability to fight back".
- Ask everyone what they think about those options, both how amenable they are to them, and concerns with them.
Conversation 2: Keiko Concerns
- Talk to Inoue privately about Keiko's mental state.
- Mention what she said to us, and our concerns about:
- Takahashi worsening her depression.
- Takahashi suborning her loyalty.
- That we fear her crush on Inoue might now be her strongest tie to the team.
- Ask Inoue what we could do about this. Mention following options and ask for her opinion on them:
- <Looking for contributions on specific remedies for Keiko's mental state>
- We could run, steal the scroll, and get Jiraya to teach Keiko the neccesary information.
- Spend more time with the party. A N-days-on N-days-off schedule with Takahasi.
- Find some way to give her active leadership again, some task which forces her to worry about our well-being.
- Bad Option: genjitsu mind-fuckery
- Bad Option: play into the crush to tie her deeper to our group
- Does Inoue know whether Keiko has been using her bloodline during Takahashi's training?
- We're worried it might be harming her and changing her mindset for the worse.
Conversation 3: Kagome's Catastrophes
- Talk to Inoue and Kagome, again privately.
- Ask both of them about their estimate of our tactical and strategic combat position.
- How capable are we of destroying this place? How much time would it take for Kagome to deploy explosive seals all over town, enough to obliterate everything/kill most people?
- How capable are we of an assasination? against Takahashi? other leaders? could we make it look like an accident?
- How effectively can we run away? Kill pursuers?
- How much do we know about the scroll's security measures? Do they think we could steal it? destroy it?
- Ask Kagome "Pretend you're the one designing the scroll security measures but with the tools you think village sealmasters have.
- Would you, with your actual skillset, be able to get through that?"
- Ask kagome if there's any updates from his research on the village's seals.
- Does he think he could disable or disrupt them?
- If he got a chance to study the summoning scroll, does he think he could vet it for safety? How much time would he need to do a basic job of vetting the seal? (One that would satisfy Inoue levels of paranoia, not Kagome levels of paranoia)
- Does he have any guesses on what that big Yoshida seal is?
Conversation 4: Needling Noburi
- Make sure this is private, with only Nobby and Us listening.
- Ask him how he's feeling about the Yuno betrothal stuff.
- Ask him how he would feel about the following options:
- Run away immediately, leaving Yuno behind.
- Run away but take Yuno with us.
- Letting the marriage go through and staying.
- Finding some way to disrupt the marriage while still staying. (Politically incredibly bad).
- If he seems amenable to advice:
- Point out that arranged marriages do happen and if both parties are reasonable, willing to compromise, and care about each other's well-being then love will often come in the long term.
- If those things aren't there then it's really difficult to create happiness and stability.
- Do you know why Yuno is considered cursed? If not, what is your guess? Also, could you ask her next time you get the chance?
- Does he think Yuno's reliable? Does he actually want to be in a relationship with her?
- If Nobby asks why we're asking, tell him that we're trying to figure out how to deal with all of this craziness. We want what's best for the team, but that means knowing what everyone in the team wants.
Conversation 5: Akane Assessment
- Talks to Akane, again privately.
- Mention that she shouldn't have brought Yuno into the base. What if she sneaks in at night to steal/stab Noburi?
- Try to be a little less trusting of people she doesn't know well or who don't have the trust of the entire team.
- Tell her to ask herself "what would Hazou do?" when dealing with non-group members. This won't always be the right option, but it should always be an option she considers carefully.
- Be kind and understanding as we talk with Akane.
- Give her a hug if she wants. Tell her that we understand how hard this is for her.
The update needs to end no later than 8 in-game hours after Inoue gets back, allowing us to vote again. We should also schedule this update so we have some time to talk to Keiko/others immediately afterwards (Immediately afterwards in game time, two updates from now in external time). Feel free to not go through all the conversations as long as they go in order and the update ends as early as possible in-game.
I want to make sure that if we run, we take the entire team with us. That means knowing how they feel about things and gathering more information on their mental state.
We have very little to lose by doing this and the information we gain can allow us to keep the team together no matter what option we choose next.
Edit 1: Changed "Proto-Plan" to "Plan". Added an explicit call for people's opinions in Conversation 1. Added note to leave some time to talk to Keiko/others. Added some explanation/justifications to the rear end of the plan.
Edit 2: Voted for own plan ...
Edit 3: Added some options for helping Keiko to Conversation 3
Edit 4: Added note to ask Nobby about Yuno's cursed status. Added Conversation 5.
Edit 5: Grammar and spelling. Added Akane Hug.
Edit 6: Changed "Scene" to "Conversation" so that the plan is a little less prescriptive to the QMs. Added "Run and get jiraya to tech keiko" to possible options to discuss with INoue. Added questions about stealing the scroll.
Edit 7: Added note that QMs don't have to write all the conversations as long as they short circuit correspondingly early. Re-ordered the conversations in the order I want to have them.
Edit 8: Added note asking Inoue about whether Keiko has been overusing her bloodline during training.
Edit 9: Added questions for kagome about sealing research. Added note on what to tell nobby if he asks why we care. Added conversation 0 to cover conduct during the second half of the meeting.
